1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for processing computed tomography (CT) images to align multiple sets of CT images in a unified coordinate system.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Visualization techniques related to visualizing a patient's lungs have been developed so as to help clinicians perform diagnoses and/or surgeries on the patient's lungs. Visualization is especially important for identifying a location of a diseased region. Further, when treating the diseased region, additional emphasis is given to identification of the particular location of the diseased region so that a surgical operation is performed at the correct location.
In the past, scanned two-dimensional (2-D) images of the lungs have been used to aid in visualization. In order to obtain the scanned 2-D images, a patient undergoes multiple CT scans. However, each CT scan has a different coordinate system based on scan parameters, start point(s), and field of view. When specifying a location in the lung, a user would specify a slice number along the Z-axis and then a pixel coordinate in two dimensions of the image starting from the top left corner of the image (i.e., left to right on an X-axis and top to bottom on a Y-axis). The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard has coordinate conventions that define the patient orientation in the image which are included in the specific scan and/or machine.